ZL File Analysis & Management

Defensible Deletion

As companies accumulate more and more data, keeping everything becomes less viable. At least a portion of total data in file shares is ROT and should be disposed of, but how can this data be identified and disposed of defensibly? Doing so requires three components.

• A clear policy that defines when data can be deleted, in compliance with all regulatory and business requirements.
• Consistent application of that policy, with supervised disposition of documents in regular intervals.
• Audit trails to demonstrate which documents were deleted and why.

Organizations may wish to evaluate solutions that are capable of enforcing defensible deletion through the implementation of tools such as a master retention schedule, automated, manual, and hybrid records classification, as well as PII identification and remediation. Following this approach minimizes the risk of spoliation and adverse inference in litigation.

Unified Governance

Large companies today have a need for holistic information governance, combining capabilities from records management, regulatory compliance, eDiscovery, and privacy, within a single platform. For example, perhaps certain business records may be deleted 7 years after being created. Other types of records may require more granular controls, such as “delete document 10 years after the contract expires,” or “10 years after the employee leaves the company.” These are referred to as events-based triggers.

However, the Record Schedule is just one of the pieces that determines whether a document can be deleted. If it is “on-hold” for a legal matter, it must be preserved despite its record policy. Similarly, if it is being retained for a regulatory requirement, that may also supersede the record policy. In another instance, if a document has personal data, and it is requested to be deleted per a GDPR request, before deleting data, the system needs to verify whether it is being retained for other purposes. Thus, there is the need for an integrated system that draws from each governance function to form the basis of lifecycle management.

Global Content Search

Global Content Search is required for a handful of key requirements, such as data subject access requests, records searches, and eDiscovery. However, many file share cleanup tools tag data at the point of ingestion, but do not create a full-text index. As a result, if a company wishes to search for content or reclassify documents based on new content policies, they are placed in a difficult position.

Content Search is also leveraged for more advanced use cases, such as pattern-recognition to identify documents with personal data. If a tool only performs content analysis at the point of ingestion, new patterns and policies are difficult to implement. Full-content indexing is a critical requirement for many governance functions, as well as for companies seeking to leverage data for analytics and AI

In-Place Management + Archiving

The majority of data can be managed “in-place,” without creating any document copies. This is ideal for 80% of data that is low-to-medium value, with minimal risk of deletion. However, certain documents such as business records and documents placed on legal hold, may need to be archived. Therefore, the capability for in-place management in conjunction with selective archiving is essential to holistic information governance.